This report investigates military thinking and force structures in relation to the requirements of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), tracing developments in these fields since the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) presented its report in December 2001. The focus is on five factors seen as central to military development.
The first section discusses the growing divide between military doctrines and force structures designed to fight more or less symmetric interstate wars on the one hand, and those designed to do peacekeeping, stabilization and counterinsurgency on the other. Both ‘schools’ are relevant to R2P, but in very different ways. The former involves a capability to destroy military forces and the machinery of states. If credible, that may be effective as a threat to prevent rational actors from committing atrocities. However, implementation can create a chaos that this approach was not designed to handle. To manage that chaos and to protect the population in the long-term, forces capable of controlling population and territory – i.e. capabilities of the other school – are needed. The balance between these two military ‘schools’ is currently in favour of the latter, but that may change if great power rivalry continues to escalate. A return to forces designed solely to protect classic national interests would be very harmful to the military capabilities needed for R2P.
The second section discusses the availability and suitability of two kinds of forces. The level of forces in ongoing operations has risen
dramatically since 2001. In a sense this is positive: it improves the staying power of the forces already in place. But this level is not likely to increase further unless now-marginal actors can become more involved in international operations. Moreover, the availability of deployable rapid reaction forces in readiness increased dramatically from 2001 to 2007, but the strength of these forces is now threatened by the demands of ongoing operations. The growth in Western reaction forces is likely to slow down if European policies do not change. This can be highly deleterious to the ability to intervene rapidly if genocide is unfolding. Even so, the ongoing institutionalization of the African Standby Force (ASF) clearly represents an improvement.
The third section compares the doctrinal requirements of the ICISS with recent doctrinal developments, especially in the USA but also in the UN and NATO. It concludes that these developments in doctrines for counterinsurgency and stabilization are positive and highly relevant for R2P. There is a new recognition of the need to protect the population in order to achieve success in all stability and counterinsurgency operations. This is a big shift that, if continued, may enhance the ability to protect quite dramatically.
The fourth section discusses military security sector reform (SSR) as a R2P measure. It holds that SSR may be perceived both as a tool in post-intervention settings and as a tool for the prevention of war crimes. It concludes that there is a gap between the thinking on civilian SSR and military SSR, and that new momentum is needed in military SSR.
Both the increase in rapid reaction forces from 2001 to 2007 and the ongoing paradigmatic shift in military doctrine represent improvements in the international community’s military ability to address R2P emergencies. However, the rising demand for more troops to ongoing operations is a real threat to the credibility of the new reaction forces. If the international community is to be able to prevent or stop genocides or major atrocities in the future, greater attention should be given to the maintenance and preferably also the expansion of such forces.
